Walt Disney’s main concern was to fill cinemas with entranced anklebiters and their parents, but to do this he had to bowdlerise the original source material of his films to suit American tastes, so Bambi’s species was altered to one that could be recognised by home audiences. However, until the late 1960s he continued to search Europe for novels that he could adapt. Lottie and Lisa was the second most famous novel by the German author and satirist Erich Kästner (his first was Emil and the Detectives). It told of two reunited identical twins who switch places to help their parents’ respective marriages, and was filmed by Disney as The Parent Trap, starring Hayley Mills. It managed three sequels and a remake with Lindsay Lohan, as well as Hindi and Tamil versions.

The two sisters sat in the airport lounge, waiting for their flight to Kerala. It was delayed. They were keen to get going. Their mother had died the day before and they were going to settle her affairs. “She had a good life. She lived to 97,” explained one of the sisters. “You know what her secret was? Coconuts.”

“One thing I have become very sensitive about is this accusation that Conservatives are somehow racist,” Edward de Mesquita, who is standing as a Conservative candidate in West Hampstead, in London, told the Camden New Journal. “Conservatives are not racist. So many of the Conservatives have foreign wives, after all.

Hilary Mantel, twice winner of the Man Booker Prize, who made her name dissecting the 16th-century court intrigues of King Henry VIII’s adviser Thomas Cromwell, is turning her attention to a more modern politician – Lady Thatcher.

There’s a perfect piece of Washington DC anthropology by the 33rd president of the United States, Harry S Truman, that should be carefully tucked into the back pocket of US political correspondents and pulled out when crises, such as placing too much faith in the White House, arise unexpectedly.